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Santorum leads GOP presidential candidates into Minnesota

Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, became the first Republican White House hopeful to bring his campaign to Minnesota ahead of the state's caucuses on Feb. 7, with a stop Monday evening in Luverne.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will make a campaign stop in the Twin Cities area on Wednesday afternoon with former Gov. Tim Pawlenty - an event sure to make headlines in the state's biggest media market.

But Santorum wasted no time addressing the question of, "Why Luverne?"

Why kick off his Minnesota campaign in a small town more than 200 miles from the Twin Cities?

"The reason we came to Luverne is that when we were successful in Iowa, the best county in the state for me at the Iowa caucuses was Lyon County, which is just to the south of here," said Santorum, who claimed a statistical dead heat with Romney in the caucuses.
Santorum got more than 60 percent support in the Iowa county less than 10 miles south of Luverne, and he said he hopes to pull that Iowa energy northward, first into Luverne and then across Minnesota.

The Luverne area is a lot like neighboring Iowa: agricultural, deeply religious and conservative: The kind of crowd that liked Santorum's message that if he becomes president he'll work to repeal President Barack Obama's signature health care law. They also liked Santorum's goal of cutting $5 trillion in federal spending in five years.

"You want to know now how we're going to cut spending? We're going to have to take on every single program in Washington, every one," Santorum told a full house of about 450 supporters and onlookers at the Palace Theater in Luverne. The event was originally scheduled for a nearby Pizza Ranch restaurant but was moved when organizers got a feel for how big the crowd could be.

One of those in the audience was Charles Boeder of Pipestone. He said he was undecided on who to support in the Republican presidential contest when he came to hear Santorum.

"Really at a point of disgust and despair," Boeder said. "I felt that the Republican Party had imploded. Because Newt and Mitt are just at each other and giving the opposite party all the ammunition they need to shot the Republicans down."

Boeder said he liked what he heard Santorum say in Luverne, and plans to support him at next week's caucuses.

Santorum said he plans to be back in Minnesota for more campaigning before caucus day.

Meanwhile, Florida holds its pivotal primary Tuesday as Romney seeks to tighten his grip on the GOP nomination.

Newt Gingrich reset the race by scoring an overwhelming victory in South Carolina. But in the 10 days since, the GOP contest has turned increasingly hostile. And the polls have swung decidedly in Romney's direction.
Romney enters the day as the heavy favorite in the winner-take-all primary, the final contest in a month of high-stakes elections in which Romney claimed one win and two second-place finishes so far.

The polls opened at 7 a.m. across Florida, where Romney offered an increasingly optimistic tone while campaigning in recent days.

"With a turnout like this, I'm beginning to feel we might win tomorrow," an upbeat Romney told a crowd of several hundred at a stop in Dunedin on Monday.

Gingrich acknowledged his momentum had been checked but promised not to back down.

"He can bury me for a very short amount of time with four or five or six times as much money," Gingrich said in a television interview. "In the long run, the Republican Party is not going to nominate ... a liberal Republican."